A cleric is a spiritual leader, a paragon of the vigil to which others turn to strengthen them – body and soul. Shielded in your faith, and wielding the might of the vigil with fierce devotion, you charge into battle as you bolster your brethren. They know they can trust you to provide sanctuary from their enemies’ wrath and exact retribution upon those adversaries. Your faith will never falter and your might shall not waver as you guide your allies through the battle for Telara’s fate.
Your Role:
Clerics are the most versatile ascendants in Rift. They may fulfill any traditional role such as DPS, Healing, and Tanking in addition to hybrid roles. For example, they can be Tanks or DPS that also offer support healing. Regardless of what your group needs, you will most likely be able to fulfill that role or offer the utility they require.
As a cleric, you will have three healing souls, four DPS souls, and one tanking soul to choose from. Like all other souls, you will have one PvP soul in the form of our Templar soul. Many non-healing cleric builds will include some form of utility that is often related to healing or features traditionally associated with healers. This can be passive healing from damage done or useful (often vital) utility spells such as cleanses (defensive dispel) and in the case of the Inquisitor soul, a purge (offensive dispel) that can make some dungeon encounters much easier for everyone. Justicar, the cleric’s tanking soul, boasts an AOE interrupt spell; this is a rare and useful tool.
Strengths:
If the cleric’s strengths could be fit into one word, it would be versatility. There is almost no role, utility, or feature that can’t be obtained by some combination of cleric souls. Battle resurrection spells, and AOE cleanse, a purge that removes two stacks at a time, a self-resurrection spell, an AOE interrupt, a CC spell with no cooldown, healing based on damage dealt, and a plethora of other features are at the cleric’s disposal. The cleric calling offers several different styles of healing, so there is practically no encounter a cleric can’t heal. In terms of survivability, clerics are very strong – even DPS builds can keep themselves alive through relatively tough battles by using the Justicar tree for passive healing.
Weaknesses:
Our weakness is relatively ironic. Clerics have many tools at their disposal, but this versatility comes at a price. Many of our theoretically optimal builds have to give up utility in order to remain competitive. This is because most of our souls offer power passive bonuses based on the amount of points spent on the soul past 36. For some souls, this forces us to choose between a loss of utilities that could be gained by going deep into another soul or a substantial loss of damage or healing. This means that the calling has a myriad of amazingly useful features but you will often have only a few at a time. You will have to manage your four roles wisely to have access to certain utilities when needed, because you won’t be anywhere near to having all of them in one role.
Combat:
The cleric calling has two combat resources, one of them exclusive to the Justicar soul.
Mana: Just like mages, we use mana to cast our spells. Almost all of our spells require mana to cast them. Mana regenerates passively at a rate based on the amount of Wisdom we have. Healing clerics must be especially careful with the way they spend their mana. All of our DPS souls, as well as our tanking soul, have ways to easily regenerate this resource. Only one of our healing souls, the Warden, has a mana regeneration spell.
Cleric Spell Examples:
Conviction: This resource is used by builds that include the Justicar soul. Conviction is generated while the cleric has Justicar’s Cavalier buff active. Up to four points of conviction can be accumulated. Many Justicar spells require conviction to cast and often consume one point of conviction.
Conviction Spell Examples:
Attributes:
This section explains how attributes benefit clerics. There are two types of attributes: primary attributes and combat ratings. Without taking into account soul bonuses and effects, primary attributes will generally award the same benefits regardless of your level. Combat ratings, however, will award less for each point the higher your level is. For example, 100 Spell Crit would award a level 20 character a much higher chance to crit than it would for a level 50 character.
[Primary]Wisdom:
This is our main attribute, you will find that wisdom is usually the highest attribute in cleric equipment. Cleric DPS roles may prefer Intelligence in many cases, but for healing and tanking, this is usually our most desirable primary attribute. It provides spell power and mana regeneration.
[Primary]Intelligence:
The other caster attribute, it is most useful for our DPS and good for healing. It isn’t normally desirable for cleric tanks. Intelligence increases our maximum mana, our spell critical hit chance, and our spell power to a lesser extent than Wisdom.
[Primary]Endurance:
This is a very attractive stat for cleric tanks. Other roles should not try to gear for this stat, as it offers no other benefit than an increase to maximum health.
[Primary]Strength and Dexterity:
Cleric equipment will never have strength or endurance, so these attributes can only be obtained through item enhancements and buffs. They both offer attack power. Strength provides parry rating and block rating, while dexterity provides dodge rating and physical crit rating.
Spell Power:
Increases the damage and healing done by your spells. For tanking clerics, this stat provides up to 1.95 Parry per point and 0.3 Block per point depending on the cleric’s build. Druids, Justicars, and Shaman get one point of Attack Power per point of Spell Power.
Attack Power:
Increases the damage done by your physical abilities. Druids, Justicars, and Shaman get one point of Attack Power per point of Spell Power.
[Rating]Spell Crit:
This increases your chance to critically hit with your spells. For clerics with Druid, Justicar, or Shaman as one of their souls, each point of Spell Crit will also provide one point of Physical Crit.
[Rating]Physical Crit:
This increases your chance to critically hit with your physical attacks. Clerics with Druid, Justicar, or Shaman as one of their souls receive one point of Physical Crit.
[Rating]Focus:
Focus increases your chance to hit enemy targets with spells. Different variables factor into the chance to miss your target, such as the difference in level between you and said target. Clerics with Druid, Justicar, or Shaman as one of their souls will receive one point of Hit for each point of Focus.
[Rating]Hit:
Increases your chance to hit enemy targets with physical abilities. Different variables factor into the chance to miss your target, such as the difference in level between you and said target. Clerics with Druid, Justicar, or Shaman as one of their souls will receive one point of Hit for each point of Focus.
[Rating]Block:
Increases your chance to block enemy attacks, and increases the amount of damage absorbed by blocking. Blocking absorbs a percentage of the damage dealt by a melee or ranged attack. You cannot block spells.
[Rating]Parry:
This attribute increases your chance to parry enemy attacks. When you parry, you avoid 100% of the damage of a melee or ranged attack. You cannot parry spells.
[Rating]Dodge:
Dodge increases your chance to dodge enemy attacks. Dodging avoids 100% of the damage that would be dealt by a melee or ranged attack. You cannot dodge spells.
[Rating]Armor:
Reduces physical damage taken.
Toughness:
Toughness reduces the amount of damage dealt by non-play critical hits. It reduces the damage by a percentage of the attack’s base damage. This is a tanking stat and is only found on tanking gear.
Resistances:
Resistances will reduce damage taken from the type of damage associated by the resistance attribute. For example, Life Resistance will reduce Life damage taken.
Part 2 – The Divine Retribution: Part 2 – Offensive Soul Overview
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